Roccat Burst Pro Review Optical Switch Mouse With Loud Mechanical Clickly Sound

Bursting with ingenuity, the Roccat Burst Pro shell construction is not hard to miss! It has a perforated honeycomb inner structure with translucent tinted acrylic on top of it that lets the RGB lighting glow through the honeycomb perforations, spanning the hunch of the mouse and the left/right click buttons.

The translucent tinted acrylic tapers around the rear end sides of the Burst Pro mouse, which are made of opaque plastic with a textured splatter-like paint finish. The lighting can also be seen through the skate pads, which are translucent too. The middle section of the base of the mouse is made of opaque plastic.
Dimensions of the Burt Pro are 6cm wide, 12cm long and 4cm high (at the hump). The Roccat Burst Pro weighs 72 grams without the cable (106 grams with the cable); hence is similar in weight to the Kova AIMO mouse and perfect for first person shooter (fps) gaming. The left and right click buttons slightly tower over the dpi button, which sits slightly recessed alongside the scroll wheel.
There is a enough clearance to comfortably scroll the wheel without accidentally pressing the dpi button. There is a total of 6 physical buttons, all of which are programmable. The scroll wheel forward/backward scroll can also be remapped as button functions; hence the Burst Pro mouse has technically 8 buttons. Under the hood, the Roccat Burst Pro is equipped with an Owl-Eye 16K optical sensor (PixArt's PMW3381), which enables the Burst Pro to have up to 16000dpi resolution - double the dpi resolution you get with the Kova AIMO mouse.

The PixArt PMW 3381 sensor is based on the Pixart 3389 sensor; hence it also adds 32 frames of smoothing automatically when you set the dpi higher than 1900dpi. Mouse smoothing can make Aim Assist a lot stronger because it, basically, increases input delay, which in the case of the PMW3381 sensor is 6.4ms. 

Not all mice optical sensors (e.g. 3366 sensor) add smoothing process but, you can keep it very low by simply keeping the dpi between 400dpi and 1800dpi, which only adds 2 frames of smoothing process (0.4ms input delay). That said, even 6.4ms delay is hardly noticeable and nothing like the v-sync/screen tearing problem of consoles, which adds a very noticeable delay (150ms and higher).

Roccat Burst Pro uses the same optical switches (Titan switch optical) found on the Vulcan TKL Pro keyboard, which feel like using mechanical switches but with very little switch bounce delay, unlike mechanical switches. 

You know when you are using a mechanical switch mouse because of the annoying double clicking that tends to happen, particularly when trying to use the scope function in first person shooter games. The only mouse switch type that doesn't produce any debounce at all are those with laser-based switches.

The Burst Pro buttons make a loud mechanical clicky sound when pressed, including the scroll wheel middle press button. The scroll wheel, itself, makes no noise when rolled and has a ridged rubber surface and RGB lighting along its perimeters.

There is on-board memory too, which lets you store 5 profiles, DPI setting, color profiles, as well as save macros if the macro is set on the profile. To save macros though, you need to download Roccat's Swarm software, which also gives you access to all other customizeable features of the mouse, including the RGB lighting, lift off distance, angle snapping, polling rate (up to 1000Hz) and dpi, which is set by default to 400dpi, 800dpi, 1200dpi, 1600dpi and 3200dpi. The dpi can be adjusted in increments of 50dpi. 

Speaking of dpi, the Roccat Burst Pro only has one dpi button, whereas a lot of gaming mice have two dpi buttons, which changing dpi more convenient because you can go from high dpi to low dpi in an instant; whereas with the Burst Pro you have to cycle through.

With adjustable lift off distance, you can adjust how high the mouse optical sensor tracks when lifting the mouse off the mouse pad, which may help when playing 3D first-person shooter games. The Burst Pro has good tracking speed (450 ips), which helps the sensor track accurately even when moving the mouse really fast on the mousepad.

The Roccat Burst Pro is attached to a non-detachable fabric cable with a very soft sheath construction that feels like a shoelace. There is no resistance from the cable when gliding the mouse, which you typically get with rubber cables and stiff fabric cables. The Burst Pro cable terminates into a USB-A connector with a metal plug that has Roccat's branding on one side and a mouse silhouette etching on the other side, which helps ascertain the right side up of the plug, as well as differentiate the Burst Pro from other peripherals. The connector plug cable joint has a thick strain relief for added reinforcement to prevent premature wear, which is already reduced by the use of a fabric cable rather than a rubber cable.


The Roccat software is compatible with newer versions of Windows computers only, including Win 7, Win 8 and Win 10. The Roccat Swarm software is comprehensive, easy to download via a standalone installer and has a refined interface, which is easy to navigate. Once installed, the Swarm software takes up 160MB of storage space. Along with the software, the Burst Pro comes with spare mouse feet skate pads with easily removable 3M sticky adhesive. You can buy the Roccat Burst Pro from amazon.